This blog is dedicated to the many many Europeans who, despite continuous disinformation campaigns, do not believe the worst of the Jews (malign and secret Jewish power); who do not disguise anti-Semitism behind the language of anti-Zionism; and who know that Israel embodies the best in democracy.

Saturday, 30 April 2011

PARIS (EJP)----During a meeting in Jerusalem, European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor invited Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to a European conference of heads of state to discuss the assault on Israel’s legitimacy.

The conference will take place in the coming months. Netanyahu confirmed his participation, the EJC said.

"This conference will be a vital step in the battle against the ongoing assault on Israel’s legitimacy" Kantor said. "This will be a top level meeting where we can make real headway to meeting this challenge in Europe which appears to be the beachhead of the delegitimization campaign."

Sunday, 24 April 2011

"When you go to Gaza, or Afghanistan, you have to realise that our conception of life, is complitely different from any Islamic political conception of life. You can die because you are Jewish, because you are Italian, or Christian, because you are an apostate, or a corrupt Westerner... the extremist mentality, make no bones about it, cancels out friends and allies. No matter how much you have worked against the «Zionist power» or that you have called Zionists «rats» (and Arrigoni did this), nothing is of any worth if you break their rule, a rule which will remain unclear until the knife blade comes. Arrigoni was fan of political Islamism because he was an enemy of the Jews, but this did not save him from a cruel execution in front of the camera, just as the one of many others friends or enemies of Hamas or the Islamic Jihad, never mind."

"Hamas is responsible for the captivity of Gilad Shalit; it was responsible for the armed destruction of the UN recreational camp for children, which did not abide by Islamic dictates; it was responsible for arresting 150 women under the accusation of witchcraft and the execution of several of them; it is Hamas that has introduced by law death penalty, whipping, cutting off hands and crucifixion, according to Sharia. Hamas killed the 32-year old Christian book salesman Rami Khader Ayyad, guilty of selling Bibles. Not all those who carry out these operations, or which Hamas gives orders to fire Qassam missiles against Israel, are members of the terrorist organization that rules Gaza; indeed at times it pretend to fight them. Hamas is a movement, a party, a fundamentalist State. Its statute stipulates that it wants to destroy the Jewish State, to exterminate Jews and impose an Islamic caliphate on the entire world. Salafite fringes and those linked more to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, those influenced to a greater or lesser extent by Iran or Al Qaeda and based in the Gaza Strip, join up and leave Hamas by turns. The fact that Hamas has now disowned the killers of Arrigoni [photo with Ismaïl Hanyeh] with is not of the slightest importance. In any case, they were still employed by Hamas as members of the Al Qassam Brigades.

To understand the death of this Italian activist, one important fact must be grasped: his death was triggered by the spurious way he mixed his humanitarian ideals with the cause of fundamentalist Gaza, by the fact that he mixed his life with that of his potential enemies, that he thought about as his best friends. But fundamentalists do not have stable affinities. Only their interpretation of Quran counts. Hamas Gaza, where Arrigoni has been killed, is for us a land ruled by awful and distant laws. Arrigoni loved the Palestinians, but he remained a total foreigner for them. It is for us unconcivable, even if you are a militant like Arrigoni, to live alongside those who fire missiles on civilians, wear belts packed with explosives and hand out sweets when an Israeli family is killed in Itamar, including a three months baby, a four years old child and another of nine.

Saturday, 16 April 2011

"The failure of the U.K. and France to oppose the report is particularly difficult to understand. Europe's two foremost military powers are themselves involved in asymmetrical conflicts against enemies that ignore the civilized world's rules of war. The Goldstone Report could have set a dangerous precedent, undermining their armies' ability to face off enemies hiding among civilian populations. And yet, then-Foreign Secretary David Miliband of the previous Labour government seemed to accept the moral equivalence the Goldstone report tried to draw between Hamas terrorists and democratic Israel: "We take seriously all substantive allegations of breaches of International Humanitarian Law by both sides during the Gaza conflict," he said at the time."

After almost two years, Richard Goldstone finally retracted his war crimes accusations against Israel. "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document," the head of the U.N. Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict wrote in a Washington Post op-ed Friday. Mr. Goldstone has now confirmed that Israel did not intentionally target civilians, suggested that Israel's much lower estimates of Palestinian civilian casualties than those cited in his own report were probably correct and credited the Jewish state with conducting credible investigations into alleged wrongdoings by individual soldiers.

While this about-face is welcome, the report's many flaws were obvious from the start to any fair-minded observer. It's hardly surprising that Israel's enemies lapped up the Goldstone Report. But the responses of Israel's European friends were more disappointing. When the U.N. General Assembly voted on November 5, 2009 to endorse the report, many European Union countries failed to stand by their embattled partner. Cyprus, Ireland, Portugal, Malta, and Slovenia voted in favor of the U.N. resolution. Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Romania, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom abstained.

Swiss train service is ordered to allow signs that claim 'Israel was established with violence on Palestinian land'.
A Swiss court has ordered the state's national train service, the SBB, to allow a pro-Palestinian group to hang anti-Israeli posters in Zurich's central train station, the Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger reported on Tuesday.

Members of the Palestine Solidarity Action first attempted to hang controversial posters in several locations within the station in 2009, but were ordered by the station's management to take them down after three days.

The posters appeared to argue against Israel's right to exist. "Sixty-one years of Israel, 61 years of injustice," the sign read. "A country without a people did not exist in the Middle East for the people without a country," it claimed. "Israel was established with violence on Palestinian land. The injustice demands resistance!"

Monday, 11 April 2011

But stops short of condemning (let alone apologising) and calls the organisers pacifists.

BRUSSELS (EJP) ---The Mayor of Brussels, Freddy Thielemans, said he “regretted” the proportions taken by a anti-Israel demonstration held last month in the heart of the Belgian capital by a group of pro-Palestinian associations who wanted to "denounce the apartheid regime in Israel and encourage people to boycott it."

The associations described as "pacifists" staged an Israeli checkpoint in the middle of Rue Neuve, the main commercial street in Brussels. The images were then filmed and broadcast on Facebook and YouTube.

This staging drew many angry reactions within the Belgian Jewish community especially since it had been authorized by the city and that it occurred one day after the brutal assassination by Palestinians of five members of an Israeli family in Itamar.

The staging ended with the murder of an Arab boy by an Israeli soldier. His mother then filed a Palestinian flag on the body of her child while the audience applauded and shouted "boycott Israel".

"I am ashamed of my city, ashamed of my country today. It is time to look at the reality and act. I invite you to visit a checkpoint at the border and you will forge your own opinion", wrote Julia Szerer, a young 19 year old girl in an email sent to the mayor.

Frederique Ries, a Brussels City Councillor and Euro MP, also wrote to the Mayor, denouncing a "false caricature whose only effect is to import the Middle East conflict in Belgium."

"Criticism is allowed, it is obvious. In Belgium as well as in Israel. But freedom of expression to which I am very attached has its moral and legal limits which have been exceeded. This amounted to incitement to hatred and violence", she stressed in her letter.

In response, the Mayor "regretted the proportions taken by the event" and said he was "sorry" that people have been shocked.

"Without commenting on the content of their message, it is clear that the organizers have exceeded the limits that were set" , Freddy Thielemans said.

"I asked police to be vigilant in the future regarding the authorization of such actions on public space. While preserving the right to freedom of expression, we will do our utmost to prevent such a scenario happening again."

Sunday, 10 April 2011

Triodos Bank is a European self-styled ethical bank . It has decided to exclude Dexia Bank (read boycott) for involvement in Israel. Search the Triodos site for boycotting for excluding Saudi Arabia for human rights violations and predicatably the return is nil ... Triodos writes that Dexia is a Belgian bank. In fact, and Triodos knows it full well, Dexia is a French-Belgian bank, but the extremely violent pro-boycott campaign comes from Belgium and is tainted with antisemitc tones, like the European multisecular blood libel accusations. As revealed by this blog and NGO Monitor : Pro-divestment rally attended by NIF, EU grantees turns to antisemitism : "The event featured an antisemitic episode, when one rally leader drank fake blood out of a wine glass – an apparent reference to the libel of Jews drinking Christian blood as wine – to highlight Israel’s alleged brutality. The target of the rally was Dexia, a bank with an Israeli subsidiary. The use of the ugly blood libel motif – codified as antisemitic by Europe’s rights monitoring agency – raises important questions about the relationship between the BDS (boycotts, divestment, and sanctions) Movement and antisemitism."

Belgian bank Dexia has been excluded from the Triodos sustainable investment universe because of its ongoing financing of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Dexia in Israel
Dexia Israel Bank (DIB), a subsidiary of Dexia, has financed Israeli settlements in the past. In response to shareholder and stakeholder pressure, DIB stopped new loans to Israeli settlements in June 2008. There are also indications that current loans are being withdrawn, although the longest maturity loan in the portfolio will not end until 2017. DIB’s actions have caused uproar in Israel and a regional council major in southern Israel called for a DIB boycott.

Despite the freeze on new loans and withdrawal by DIB, the bank still has loans outstanding to the Municipality of Jerusalem. Jerusalem lies at the heart of the occupied territories and since 1967 East Jerusalem has been under Israeli government rule. Settlements have been established for Jewish Israeli occupants only and settlers receive substantial financial benefits, as well as access to land and natural resources in the disputed territory. By financing the municipality, DIB loans are potentially being used to finance human rights abuses against Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

Thursday, 7 April 2011

"Israel's reputation should be restored and, as a consequence, EU-Israeli bilateral relations should be upgraded."

BRUSSELS (EJP)---Italian MEP Firorello Provera thinks that the EU should call for the Goldstone Report on the Gaza war to be rectified after his author retracted the conclusions on Israel.

In response to a question from EJP, Provera, who is Vice-Chairman of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, said he was "astonished" by Goldstone’s remarks in an op-ed in The Washington Post.

"Either the report was conducted without the appropriate information and research on the ground, or it was targeted to depict an unrealistic situation for political purposes. In both cases, the report put Israel in a very difficult position in the eyes of the international community," the MEP from the Europe of freedom and democracy group, said.

"The priority for the European Union and the international community should be to re-establish the truth and clarify the responsibilities of all those involved in drafting the report," he added.

He said that "Israel's reputation should be restored and, as a consequence, EU-Israeli bilateral relations should be upgraded."

"I always keep in mind that Israel is the only true democracy in the region, and we share common values as well as, unfortunately, the same threat from fundamentalists."

The organisers of a second flotilla aiming to break Israel's siege on Gaza are seeking EU diplomatic protection after Israeli commandos killed nine people and injured 52 during their first trip in 2010.

Speaking to EUobserver from Paris on Monday (4 April), Claude Leostic from Association France Palestine Solidarite (AFPS) said the group will next week send letters to top EU officials Herman Van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton urging them to threaten Israel with economic sanctions if there is a repeat of last year's violence.

The first Gaza flotilla ended in an Israeli commando raid which killed nine people and injured 52.

"The EU has been saying for a long time that the blockade is against international law. It has the means to apply economic pressure, to cancel its economic agreement with Israel. If they are serious about their position, they could send such a message. This would be a really good move," she explained.

The NGOs behind the project also expect several MPs from EU countries and MEPs from Brussels to join them when they set sail in late May. [...]

Saturday, 2 April 2011

On Tuesday, March 22, 2011, an article by Ana Carbajosa was published by Spanish daily El País. Ana Carbajosa is El País' correspondent in Jerusalem, which is Israel's capital, though the newspaper she works for still denies this fact by intentionally indicating that Israel's capital city is Tel Aviv.

But now it's time to focus on the vocabulary and the images used by the Spanish anti-Israeli media, and the aforementioned article will be used here as a good example of media bias against the Jewish State.

Firstly, the article is titled as follows: El ejército israelí mata a ocho palestinos, dos de ellos menores, en Gaza, i.e., Israeli army kills eight Palestinians, two of them being minors, in Gaza. And secondly, it's subtitled as follows: "Más de una veintena de palestinos, varios de ellos jóvenes, han resultado heridos durante el ataque a consecuencia de una serie de ataques perpetrados por el ejército", i.e., "More than twenty Palestinians, several of them being youths, have been injured during the attack as a consequence of a series of attacks perpetrated by the army".

Both the title and the subtitle deliberately omit Israel's main reason to attack: Palestinian attacks intentionally directed against Israeli civilians by launching rockets from the Gaza Strip. It's also deliberately omitted that among those killed there were three Palestinian terrorists who were firing from densely populated areas, a fact which could confirm Israel's claim of being attacked by them and the use of local non-combatants as human shields and civilian infrastructures as bases for their operations.

The Palestinian attacks against Israel, the dead terrorists and their tactics are mentioned within the main body of the article, but taking into account that the title is written in bold and in bigger letters and the subtitle is just under it, as well as they're the first part to be read, they claim the attention of the reader firstly and thus condition his or her perception of what has happened: a supposed Israeli attack against Palestinian civilians or at least without consideration for them.

Furthermore, the terms "terrorist", "terrorists" or "terrorism" are not used regarding the members of Palestinian terrorist groups or the groups themselves. The two Palestinian terrorist groups mentioned in this case are Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which are referred to by their names or as "Palestinian armed groups" or simply "armed groups". Hamas is also referred to as an "Islamist movement".

The terrorists are referred to as "militiamen"

In order to avoid doubts about Israel's veiledly alleged vileness among the readers and to erase those facts which could be used to defend Israel's claims from their minds, it's told precisely in the last paragraph that Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip, early in 2009, left 1,400 Palestinians dead.

Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme (2008)

"We must be wakeful for a new anti-Semitism, sometimes too easy trivialized. We must be wakeful for a new anti-Zionism that is a hidden anti-Semitism that in reality has not accepted the existence of the state of Israel, even sixty years after its foundation. Europe cannot turn its back on Israel. For Israel is linked to the history of Europe, for more than one reason. We cannot speak about the foundation of the Jewish State without mentioning the Holocaust. There is more, the dream of a new Eretz Yisrael was born in Europe, in the hearts and minds of Theodor Herzl and his followers in the 19th century. And since many centuries, in many thousands of European Jewish households, Pesach, the Jewish feast of Easter, ends with the wish: "Next year in Jerusalem!""..........................................

Charles-Joseph, Prince de Ligne (1801)

"It seems to me that this 1800-year-old anger has lasted long enough."